Costume Research

This Nike bomber jacket is mostly worn by youth with street affiliation. With what I have seen myself  in reality and in social realism movies this jacket is commonly worn by them, mainly because of the puffiness of the jacket and the secret pockets embedded in the coat which maybe used for storage for illegal items. The hood is very big as well which enable the users to pull over their face to not reveal their identity while committing crime.

                                                                                     

In this mood board I picked out a range of pictures from different social realism films to help understand my costume arrangement for my characters in the trailer. 

From my mood board  I Inferred that hooded clothing  are stereotypically worn by mainly the Afro-Caribbean ethnic  group. Hoodies are seen to be quite intimidating . The media has left a negative stamp on the young generation by labelling hoodie-wearing teenagers as suspicious and sign of intent to commit a crime

When adults see a young person wearing a hoodie they automatically stereotype the teen as “thug” or a “trouble maker” the media has exaggerated the stereotype of hoodies  so much that it created a moral panic in some societies.

People forget the real reason for the wearing of hoodies for example to  feel comfortable and warm during cold weathers.

social realism films 99% of the time if not all the time conform to the negative stereotypes of hoodies, for example the protagonist characters that are seen wearing hoodies are normally up to no good. If you go  back to my mood board you will see a picture taken from the movie “shank” on the bottom left, which shows a group of teens hooded up armed with harmful weapons and obviously the body gestures of the group suggest to the viewers that they have a negative motive.

Evidence

    Also the protagonist characters are generally from a  lower social class,  which is shown by their costumes and  mise-en-scene of the area. In the social realism pictures I have shown the female actresses  conform to the stereotype of an average female from a materially  deprived family which are conveyed to be quite trashy and ‘ratchet’.  ‘Ratchet’  is an urban term used to describe ‘A diva, mostly from urban cities and ghettos, that has reason to believe she is every mans eye candy. Unfortunately, she's wrong’ (www.urbandictionary.com) 

Challenging the stereotypes

In my trailer my male protagonist characters are going to conform to the stereotype in the way they are dressed. The reason I am conforming is because  the way social realist films dress up their male characters is the same way some dress in today's modern society, especially in the area my trailer is located the dress sense is very common. For example a hooded jumper,  tracksuit bottoms and casual trainers

I am going to challenge the way females are portrayed in social realist films. In most social realist films females are dressed up in ‘trashy’ clothing for example wearing tracksuits and hats like as you see in the image below

normally the females that are dressed up in that kind of way it influences their lifestyle and  results in  having no ambition and conform to the stereotype of women dependency on men. But  in my trailer I am to challenge that  stereotype  by dressing up my female character in decent clothing as females are starting to become more independent than in the past and also having ambitions and wanting to play a part in the bread winning role which known to be played by men alone.